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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23077633">the cut of belief (bloodied against your cheek)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous'>mouseymightymarvellous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>tales of gutsy shinobi [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Gods &amp; Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/F, Multi, Past-Nara Shikamaru/Temari - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:21:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,866</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23077633</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>they lived and they died and that was as it should have been.</p><p>and then they lived again, made of chakra and belief, because you cannot kill a god and not become one.</p><p>(our heroes, after ascension, and after living with what they have wrought.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Haruno Sakura/Yamanaka Ino, Haruno Sakura/Yamanaka Ino/Temari</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>tales of gutsy shinobi [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/712554</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the cut of belief (bloodied against your cheek)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shikamaru is in joggers, the waveforms of his music practically blossoming into colours under the force of the volume blasting through his headphones, letting the coffee shop door shut behind him, blocking out the rain, when he spots them.</p><p>Fuck. He should have known better.</p><p>The door is suddenly opening again behind him, splattering him anew with water as the wind whips through the gap, and a familiar hand clasps around his elbow, all five fingernails sharpened to perfect purple points, and it’s the only reason he doesn’t immediately turn around and leave.</p><p>Not that he would probably get very far with all three of them here.</p><p>“Ino,” Shikamaru says stiffly, instead of running.</p><p>Ino might say something in return, but it’s lost to the thumping of the beat in his ears, and she still smells the same as she ever has when she leans forward and presses a kiss to his cheek.</p><p>At the table for four tucked into a back corner, Sakura waggles her fingers in a twee wave, all sarcasm, mouth smug under the bruises of exhaustion she’s wearing like a fashion statement. Temari makes a rude hand gesture, and Shikamaru sighs, thumbing his music to silence.</p><p>“What do you want?” he demands.</p><p>Ino smiles, as sharp and beautiful and dangerous as she’s ever been, like it hasn’t been sixty years since they’ve last seen each other, and says, “Oh, Shikamaru, this is about so much more than just what I want.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They didn’t understand, not until years later, what had happened.</p><p>Even now, after all this time, they still don’t really understand it.</p><p>For all the power at their finger tips now, their second and last beginning will remain forever opaque.</p><p>They broke something during the war, or Kaguya did, or maybe it wasn’t that at all and even if the war had never happened they would have still ended up here, after the end of all things.</p><p>Or, well, maybe it wouldn’t have been them specifically, because who knows how the history books would have gone if it hadn’t been for the war, but—</p><p>It doesn’t matter, anyways.</p><p>It happened and they are here, and Sakura lived a lifetime and then, long after all her friends were dust, she walked into the Shikkotsu Forest with no intention of walking out, and there she stayed until the world changed, until she’d forgotten everything she’d been before, until a woman who was dead and buried and less than dust walked in and dragged her out.</p><p>The old gods were dead and across a world Sakura could no longer recognize walked the new gods.</p><p>Belief and chakra are powerful things.</p><p>Sakura had not realized that what was running through her veins, next to her age old grief, was divinity.</p><p>Not until Ino found her and kissed her back to waking.</p><p>She’s never quite managed to get the taste of ichor out from under her tongue.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“It’s getting out of hand,” Temari says, and tosses back her espresso, not even blinking at the bitterness.</p><p>“It’s out of hand completely,” Ino corrects sharply.</p><p>Temari levels a glare at Ino, who lets it run off her back.</p><p>Shikamaru curls tighter over his coffee and wishes he were anywhere else.</p><p>“What do you want me to do about it?” he asks, tired. “I know none of you were in Fire at the time, but the last time I tried reasoning with him, it didn’t go so well.”</p><p>“I noticed,” Temari says, “because the hurricanes ruined weather patterns across the continent for the next decade. Do you know how much work that was to put to rights?”</p><p>“Well, it’s not exactly like I was working at full capacity now, when it was just me, now was it?” Shikamaru snaps back, defensive, and he curses himself for it because Temari straightens even further, fury on her lips, because she can’t help but rise to his bait when he offers up his throat to her teeth.</p><p>“Enough,” Sakura declares, finally looking away from the rain hitting the shop’s windows and further beyond, still. “We don’t have time for this. We can’t afford to bicker between ourselves over old grievances, or we’ll be here for the next two centuries. I’ve put this off long enough. You’re either with us, Shikamaru, or you’re against us. There will be no middle ground in this fight.”</p><p>Shikamaru deflates at that, at Sakura’s green gaze burning through him.</p><p>She’s the oldest of them and the youngest of them, and for all that she’s now spent millennia threading the years as part of the triumvirate of her choosing, none of them will ever escape what dreamed them into being.</p><p>If there was any hope for middle ground in this fight, it would have been Sakura, but she is waking now, and if she has decided to finally act as fulcrum for the seesaw she has balanced since the beginning after the end—and before that, even—then there are no shadows left to shelter in.</p><p>Shikamaru sighs and looks right back at her.</p><p>She has her hair scraped back into a messy bun, stains on her scrubs, and bruises under her eyes. And, under it all, that facsimile of humanity, Shikamaru recognizes the godhood in her.</p><p>He knows, the way he knows how the stars burn and gravity breathes, that he knew her, once, when they were but children, but he doesn’t remember it, not in any way that was real.</p><p>He wonders if the boy he’d been would have followed her.</p><p>He doesn’t know. He’s doesn’t remember being that boy.</p><p>But, well.</p><p>Sakura will need him, if she is to win this with as little bloodshed and ruin as he knows—in her deepest of hearts, where even divinity cannot scrub clean—that she is a creature of mercy.</p><p>If she could kill Naruto and Sasuke on her own, she would do it.</p><p>But Ino and Temari would never let her go alone, and Shikamaru knows her deepest of hearts because this, if nothing else, they share.</p><p>He is a creature of mercy, and he is so tired of watching cities fall to ruin under the touch of a careless god.</p><p>Shikamaru sighs and looks away.</p><p>The coffee shop around them is full of the chatter of humanity.</p><p>Three blocks down in a community park, a child is hiding amidst the deep roots of a tree, praying that the shadows will be enough to hide her in a game of hide-and-seek.</p><p>Almost beyond time, now, he lived and he died and he woke up once more as more than he had ever been, the most himself he’d ever been.</p><p>The lights of the coffee shop behind him throw the image of antlers onto the table, framing his hands around the mug he’s clutching.</p><p>“I’m with you,” Shikamaru swears to Sakura, “gods and spirits help us, but I am with you.”</p><p>Ino laughs.</p><p>“My blessings on you, petitioner,” Temari mutters.</p><p>A hawk’s triumphant scream and trees growing up out of Sakura’s palms.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Even when they wander apart, Temari always finds her way back to her brothers eventually.</p><p>She doesn’t know if she’ll ever learn how to keep that resentment next to her love without it smothering her.</p><p>This time, when they each end up catching separate breezes away, it sits sharper than it ever has, the knowledge that there is no escaping it. Kankuro looks to her for guidance and Gaara looks to her for redemption and she doesn’t know how to give it to either of them, has never known how to give it. She wants to scream, sometimes, for what they take from her that she doesn’t have, that she’s never had, that isn’t theirs to take.</p><p>So, of course, when she finds a bar to sit in to begin an attempt to pretend for the night or the week or the decade that she doesn’t carry the desert wind howling in her chest and that pursing her lips and blowing the right way won't tear a sandstorm through this little city built on the bones of something older, they walk right in, arm and arm, shining and laughing.</p><p>They’ve never been friends, Temari doesn’t think.</p><p>In none of the stories have they ever been friends.</p><p>Temari thinks she would remember if she’d ever been their friend.</p><p>Rose and golden, made for growing things and beauty, and Temari has always been viciously jealous of all the ways they stand apart, of all the ways they stand together.</p><p>Some of the stories say they are sisters, some of the stories say they are wives.</p><p>As they turn mismatched eyes on her, forest green and glacier blue, Temari remembers that none of the stories are ever quite true.</p><p>Three goddesses walk into a bar…</p><p>Sakura kisses the fan of her shoulder as Ino looks up from between the sprawl of her legs through the fan of her eyelashes.</p><p>Maybe, Temari thinks, it isn’t always so bad, being one as three and three as one.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The old armour, when he summons it back into being, fits as it ever has.</p><p>“Well,” Shikamaru drawls, “this is familiar.”</p><p>Gaara is as bloodless as ever, but the exhaustion haunting his face is heavier, almost grief-stricken. “It’s never been like this,” he corrects.</p><p>Neither of them moves their gaze from the trio of women standing shoulder to shoulder at the front of the host.</p><p>“It’s always been a good time to die,” Shikamaru says.</p><p>This, Gaara concedes. “Not even we are Deathless.”</p><p>No, Shikamaru thinks, his vision filled with pink and gold as Temari launches herself into the sky, blowing Sakura and Ino’s hair into disarray. No, only one of them has ever been that.</p><p>They are all of them little more than chakra and belief, but they remember the stories humanity has forgotten.</p><p>Team 7 isn’t a name that means anything anymore, but the balance is moving, this time of her own accord.</p><p>Dawn is breaking on the horizon.</p><p>Here, at the end of all things.</p><p>Shikamaru is tired, and the shadows are calling.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Did you want to rule?” Ino asks Temari, the two of them pressed close and quiet as Sakura slumbers on the far side of the bed.</p><p>Temari considers the question, her fingers almost talons at Ino’s waist.</p><p>“Yes,” she finally says, “no. I don’t know. I think I just wanted to be free.”</p><p>“We are not only what we are believed to be,” Ino answers a question not asked. “I’ll change the world until there is nothing left in it that resembles chains to keep you.”</p><p>“And if you see so clearly what silent dreams live in hearts, what will you give Sakura?” Temari asks with a laugh, trying to disguise the wanting there.</p><p>Ino smiles, and presses the curve of it under Temari’s chin.</p><p>“A crown,” she whispers.</p><p>It’s a secret, for now.</p><p>They have centuries. They have millennia.</p><p>And they will take them.</p><p>Ino doesn’t know how they are here, after the end of all things, but she will not give up what she has been given.</p><p>Maybe it is finally time for a new story.</p><p>Maybe it is finally time for a new beginning.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For an anon, who asked for Sakura/Ino/Temari.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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